Leo, Andrew, Faust, Luke, and John entered a bar that was in a decently large building with multiple floors. When they walked inside, the bartender noticed John and nodded at him, John nodded back. John took the group to the back where they entered an elevator. Nobody thought much of it until Luke looked at the numbers next to the door.
"Uh… That's not right, is it?" Luke asked as he looked at the floor count. The building they entered only had, at most, five floors, but the elevator listed around thirty.
"Of course, it's not right. We skipped floor thirteen since its taboo, technically there's an additional floor listed when there should be one less." John pointed out that the floor count went from twelve to fourteen, skipping thirteen entirely.
"That's not what I meant." Luke groaned.
"I know, I'm messing with you. What, are the demons not allowed to build bunkers?"
"That's true, I guess…"
John pressed a button and they headed down into the bunker. Much like the first time they went through the teleporters, they were sedated. Doe squad woke up a little later back at the military academy at the hospital. Leo was in a room alone and the door eventually opened.
"Alright, Mr. Doe, you're the first of the bunch we looked at." A doctor said as they entered the room, "Now, I'll get through this quickly as we've been busy with everyone coming back from their assignments. Mr. Doe, while you may not be in the worst health I've ever seen, it is some of the grossest. I've seen some things that'll anyone up at night, but you have seven different types of worms. Seven. To say the least, I do not envy right now." The doctor said while staring at Leo with seven fingers raised.
"I'm sending you to the medical ward to recover, there, the nurses will start your treatment. You won't be there long as the process is simple. Once there, try to get some rest. I'll be heading to talk to the others in your squad now, a nurse will be by shortly to take you to the ward." The doctor said everything that needed to be said as quickly as possible before leaving.
Leo sat in the chair he woke up in and lazily looked around the room while waiting. Eventually the door opened again, and someone escorted him to a bed in another room. Leo laid down and they gave him a bunch of medication to take. Once he took the medication, the nurse disappeared as quickly as they came.
Leo leaned back in the bed with a bored expression as some people bustled around the room. Leo looked around and there were quite a few recruits with Leo resting in white beds. Most of them, however, seemed traumatized or heavily injured. Leo scratched his head and watched them.
A few hours passed and Leo found himself all alone with the curtains closed around him. He had taken a nap and was now just waiting for himself to get better. Then suddenly a nurse speed by his bed and told him, "You've got a visitor." They kept walking and disappeared before Leo even had the time to realize they were talking to him.
Someone slowly walked behind the nurse who was nowhere to be seen anymore and made their way to Leo. They opened the curtain and leaned against the frame of Leo's bed, watching him with tired eyes. Leo's first visitor was the Bunny lady, which genuinely surprised him.
"Seven worms?" She asked with a yawn.
"Yep." Leo replied.
"Damn, my record is three."
"Three? How'd that happen?" Leo asked.
"Technically its classified, but just stay away from a little village outside of Ioao."
"Never heard of it."
"Not after I was done with it." She chuckled to herself quietly. "How'd you get seven? I could check, but that ruins the fun of a good story."
"Fell into a vat of pigs blood. There was no shot in hell that the slaughterhouse would've passed a health inspection, so I guess it's my fault for hiding there."
"A slaughterhouse? Interesting. I've never fought in one of those, closest I've fought to that was a lumberyard. At least I assume they're pretty close to each other. I assume they both have saws and shit."
"There indeed were some 'saws and shit' at the slaughterhouse."
"Hell yeah. Anyway, I'm here to tell you that some bigshot is coming to talk to you later. Nobody is technically allowed to talk to you before him besides the doctors and nurses, but I outrank him, so who cares. He's coming to talk to you about what you pulled off in Riftmoor."
"What I pulled off?"
"Yeah, with the whole police station. That's some shit I'd get told to do, so good job. Keep that up and you'll become a blood hunter in no time." Bunny said. "That's all I came by to say, just wanted to check up on you. Everybody else in this hellhole is boring." She turned and left with a slight wave goodbye.
"What an interesting young lady." Grey spoke.
"I guess." Leo replied with a shrug.
Leo waited in his bed for a few hours, he seriously considered leaving, but the doctors told he'd have to stay for at least two days. At one point he did consider leaving but a nurse threatened to beat him up. It seemed counterintuitive for everyone, so Leo just stayed in bed. He was going to go insane if he had to stay in this place any longer.
The sun had now fallen and the man who Bunny had told Leo was coming by, finally arrived. They were a Major by the name of Connor Vilian, it seemed he ran this particular military academy. They came in wearing their uniform with tired eyes.
From his sitting position Leo gave a salute but the Major didn't seem to care about that stuff.
"At Ease." He muttered while rubbing his neck, "Excuse my tardiness. So many recruits drop out from the military academy after their first mission. My day is always filled with pointless meetings with nobles who want to know why their idiot children lost and arm or a leg."
Leo remained silent.
"Alright, well, let's get this over with. Mathias Doe, you are hereby charged with reckless endangerment of your squad and your subordinate squad. You are to go to the class of Ethan Burns in a week's time to receive your punishment along with all the others who are receiving punishments."
"Yes, sir."
"Alright, now off the record, you don't have to do any of that shit. As far as I'm concerned both your squad and the supplementary squad got fucked over by factors far beyond your power to control. Excuse my language. Technically you're supposed to be punished for not pulling out of the mission when over your head, but the factors didn't allow for this when the situation escalated to the point where that was required."
The Major continued, "In fact, I want to congratulate you on a job well done. In an actual mission, not that you didn't just go on one, but I mean a mission without proctors watching over you, you'd have done an excellent job. You managed to get Avery Junior's body out, and all members of your squad survived with minimal injuries. It's a shame what happened to Castille squad, but from what I'm told, there wasn't much you could do about it."
He spoke once more, "I want to say, job well done, destabilizing Riftmoor like you did. Now that, that is going above and beyond the line of duty. There are reports of rioters attacking the capitol of East Grimash, nasty stuff. Of course, not so nasty for us. With the Eagles and Wolves both collapsing, the police and politicians are in shambles. Finally, the stuff you did pulled screwed over your anonymity. The police are aware that you, Mathias, are the Rainy-Day Killer. They only know your first name and they released your photo as well. Since you're in the Knight's now, a squad is handling the situation to scrub the photos as best they can. We should be able to confuse the public and the East Grimash government as to who you really are. I believe that is it, if you've got anything to ask, now would be the time."
"I don't have any questions, sir."
"Well, I'm going to take a smoke break then. Be seeing you Knight." The Major said as he stood up and left. He reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette. An angry nurse snuffed it out with their bare hand and shooed him out of the building. This slightly horrified Leo, but he looked away from them.
He was silent as he thought to himself.
"That alone won't be enough to spark anything long term, but it will give the demons enough time to properly destabilize the region. Knowing the angels, they'll be trying their best to do the same. That or they'll try to salvage the situation. Riftmoor was in their deck of cards before the mission, but now it's going to poison the pot if they don't get fix the problem. If they do attempt to fix the problem, there's no doubt that Riftmoor will turn into a puppet state as they swap out all the politicians."
Leo smiled slightly as he thought, "I wonder who I really helped in the long run."
At the same time, in an autopsy room, the Major arrived after taking a brief smoke break. A man in scrubs looked at the Major and said with a sigh, "Sir, Avery Junior was killed with a knife, not by a stray piece of shrapnel. Someone stabbed him in the neck and after making sure he was dead; they shoved a piece of metal into the wound. Either they knew we'd check and didn't care, or they were just trying to cover up an accident."
Major looked at the dead body of Avery Junior and his eyes went to the wound in his neck. He tapped his fingers against the cold metal Junior laid upon. After coming to a conclusion that it didn't matter, another question popped up in his head.
"Who did it?" He thought to himself. He had multiple suspects but then of course there were factors that he wasn't aware of. At the end of the day, it most likely didn't matter, but it was something he wanted to know. Eventually, he disregarded it as he had more important things to worry about.
His primary suspect, Leo, was currently sitting in a bed with a lifeless expression as he thought about what happened in Riftmoor.
The slightest of smiles appeared on his face for just a moment.